Not Teaching for Over a Year (i.e. on sabbatical)

My sabbatical is fast approaching, and I am looking forward to it. It is not that I don't love teaching, if I didn't I would not have stayed in the career for 37 years. That said, this will be the first year I am not in a classroom of some sort since my first teaching job all those years ago. In this new career though, I have also been involved with field focused research, so this year will be devoted to those pursuits - not to mention being away from 'service' work on campus - that means very few meetings! (hurray!)

So what will I be up to? I have several projects on the go, and have been fortunate to be awarded several small grants to help the work, as well I will continue working with our large SSHRC-CURA grant called VOICE. I work, along with a colleague and a grad student, with a rural school division a little north of Winnipeg. Our main tasks are working with teachers doing community based action research and studying system change in the division. I am excited to get working on my other projects, and to get some writing done on several projects, including my dissertation.

Some of the projects include:
Action Research and Teacher Change - I will be working with several teachers in one rural MB school division assisting them in doing action research and I will examine the effects on practice.

A case study of a school that has gone to a 1:1 device:student - I am doing this with a colleague who is also on sabbatical - also at another rural MB school.

Numeracy evening for families - I am working with a local school division numeracy consultant, along with a team of teachers and B.Ed. students. We are trying to set up resources and run an event to help parents learn the importance of numeracy and strategies to help their kids. The goal is to share the results of this endeavour widely.

Some of the details can be found on my BU profile.

Enhancing Technology‐based Course Delivery

post by Mike & Glenn ( originally posted on ICTology, imported in September/15)

Presentation at the Seventeenth National Congress on Rural Education held in Saskatoon, SK, Canada on March 25-27, 2012. This presentation titled: Enhancing Technology‐based Course Delivery:  There is no magic bullet. In this presentation, Glenn & Mike looked at the results of three independent studies that looked at various aspects of online learning. Glenn's study examined Perceptual modalities and online learning, Mike's (Mike was PI of the study done with 2 others) looked at educator's perspectives about teaching online in SW MB high schools, and the third was conducted as an M.Ed. theses by Lilli Jardine (a teacher in Brandon, MB) - used with her permission since she could not attend this conference. Participants were encouraged to look at how these studies overlapped and the implications they held for online learning in rural schools. The presentation & handout are embedded below.

Online Learning (3 studies) No Magic Bullet

View more presentations from Mike Nantais

Comparison Table

 If you are interested, the complete research report for "Study 2" can be found here, on scribd.